


Stolen Time

by Kantayra



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Old Age, Old Dudes in Love, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik had known that Charles was the love of his life for 52 years by the time their lips finally met. At the end of the world, here are a few of those moments they finally stole back. Spoilers for DOFP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Time

Erik had known that Charles was the love of his life for 52 years by the time their lips finally met.

Over that half century, they had fought together (in rare good times) and against each other (far too often), cried together at the deaths of shared friends and foes, argued endlessly and hopelessly, lived apart but somehow still together, shared each other’s space and passions, and sometimes even managed to laugh at it all.

Erik had done horrible things to Charles, he knew, and Charles had always forgiven him everything. Charles had been an insufferable meddler, and yet – even for the cause – Erik had never been able to kill him. One bullet that would’ve made his life so much easier and completely without meaning, both at the same time.

But in all those years, through everything they’d endured, never once had they shared the warmth of a kiss.

It was too late now, of course. They’d both missed all their chances, time and again, seemingly from the moment they’d first met. They were old men now, the vigor of youth worn out of them, neither physically able to take their kiss to its ultimate conclusion.

They kissed anyway.

Miles beneath them, the world ended, their entire race wiped out by the millions. Erik knew, without needing to be told, that Charles must be feeling another mutant light go out, minute by minute, until there was no one left.

The Blackbird flew helplessly, endlessly, in loops and arcs above the carnage, slowly wearing its four inhabitants down until eventually the fuel would give out, and then Erik and Charles would die together, too. It was only fitting.

What wasn’t fitting was this: the two of them lying side-by-side on the mattress at the back of the plane, while Logan and Ororo took over their shift at operations up front, and then – for no reason whatsoever – simultaneously turning so that they faced one another, and their mouths meeting _now_ , of all times, when nothing whatsoever could come of it.

What was even less fitting was the joy that flooded Erik’s mind at that first gentle brush of lips. He shouldn’t rejoice in this – in anything – while the cause they’d both devoted their entire lives to crumbled around them. Enjoying this kiss felt like a political statement: _We could have each other, or save the world. And we chose each other._

In that moment, Erik didn’t care, though. The rest of the world dropped away – from the hum of the Blackbird’s engines to the dying screams of mutantkind – until they were just two old men who had been alone/together for far too long.

Their kiss was soft, in such a way that it felt both tentatively uncertain and familiarly casual. The good-night peck of two lovers who had done this before bed for decades, for the first time.

Erik let his eyes fall closed in the dark, felt the faint gasp of Charles’ breath against the corner of his mouth. Their lips parted a few millimeters, then slid comfortably back together. After waiting so long and suffering so much, it seemed like their first kiss should be passionate and desperate – not this slow, natural extension of everything else they’d been before.

Charles shifted slightly, undoubtedly uncomfortable twisting his upper body to the side like this. Instinctively, Erik pushed him onto his back, taking the pressure onto himself, even though his own hip wasn’t particularly spry these days. Charles – infernally stubborn as ever – at least had the decency to only try to resist him for a moment.

“You’ve always driven me insane, you know,” Erik whispered against Charles’ mouth.

“I have it on good authority that you were already insane to begin with.”

“Your own, I suppose,” Erik snorted, his breath pooling in the gap between their lips and noses, warm and intimate.

“The very best there is.” Charles smiled that patient, arrogant, all-knowing, infuriating smile, and Erik leaned back in and – oh – to finally know the taste of Charles’ _smile_.

Erik lost himself for minutes – hours – feeling that smile with his own lips and then fingertips. Charles’ hands came up to cup his face as well, and suddenly they weren’t kissing so much as breathing into each other, while their fingers explored lines and wrinkles worn deep with time.

Erik traced well-loved features at long last, dim in the faint blue glow of the Blackbird’s auxiliary lights. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe, too much closing in around him, feelings that he’d thought dead inside him for his entire life, and now being faced with so much love that it _hurt_ … “Charles, I…”

“I know.” Charles’ thumb brushed Erik’s cheek, and Erik could feel the damp heat of his own tears beneath Charles’ touch. “It’s all right, Erik. It’s the same for me.”

Erik reached out for the wetness at the corners of Charles’ eyes as well, and for a minute they just lay like that, wiping away tears as soon as they could form.

Of all the things about growing old, this loss of control was what Erik hated the most. Charles’ hand stroked his hair gently until Erik’s emotions subsided and calm(-rage-fear) filled him once more.

“Oh, the things I could do to you if we were young again,” Erik finally said regretfully. He pulled back off Charles and onto his side again, rubbing at the ache developing in his back as he did so.

Charles’ fingers followed his cheek, still fluttering warmth against Erik’s skin. “A thousand things we could do differently if we were young – the both of us.”

Erik took Charles’ hand and pressed it to his lips one last time before turning onto his back once more, so that the two of them lay side-by-side, facing the ceiling, parallel but never intersecting the way they had all their lives. Despite the façade, though, their hands failed to release each other, clinging at the end now that nothing else mattered.

Erik drifted slowly, with deceptive ease, as the pulse in Charles’ palm lulled him to sleep.

“Even now, you’re still the handsomest man I’ve ever known,” Charles whispered into the dark.

“And you’re still the most delusional,” Erik denied on impulse, because that was the most unbelievably infuriating thing of all about Charles: that after everything Erik had been and done, Charles still believed only in the good.

“Erik,” Charles confessed slowly as if to prove Erik’s point, “tomorrow we’re going to save the world.”

And Erik wanted to snort derisively at that. It was absurd that Charles _still_ saw hope when all around them there was nothing but despair. But then Charles’ hand squeezed his once, hidden from the entire world but Erik, a tentative request for reassurance and strength from a man who so rarely needed – let alone asked for – either.

Erik squeezed back and, for the first time, saw the world the way Charles did, with all its faults but still achingly beautiful down to its core. “I believe you,” he confessed in return, as deep and dark a secret as any he’d ever dared to dream.

Their fingers locked and interlaced. Fifty-two years was all it had taken for their dreams to become one.

Tomorrow, in the face of their joint resolution, the world _would_ be saved, damn it.

But tonight, for too few hours, they stole time for themselves instead.

**Author's Note:**

> A million years ago, I read a fic where the author wondered how long it took Charles and Erik to have sex after they met, and the author wisely concluded that it pretty much happened immediately after they were pulled out of the water. And it was awesome and I loved it.
> 
> But I always wondered about the flip-side: What if they were both such stubborn idiots that they literally waited for their last day alive? Hence this fic.
> 
> Plus, there's never enough of Old!Charles and Old!Erik making out. :P


End file.
